Education in Beijing
Beijing education starts in preschool, where children learn intellectual and motor skills through fun activities and games.
If students choose the academic path, they usually stay in secondary school for 3 years from the ages of 13 to 16, while students who choose the vocational programme will stay in secondary school for 3 to 4 years from the ages of 13 to 16/17.
Just prior to the 1949 founding of the People's Republic of China, Beijing had 13 institutions of higher education, 76 secondary schools, 358 primary schools including those public and private, and 21 nurseries and kindergartens.
Dong Jianhong and Chen Tiying, the authors of "Urban Education in Beijing: An International Perspective," wrote that there were few schools located in poor neighborhoods.
[2] Dong Jianhong and Chen Tiying wrote that "education in Beijing lagged far behind" that of the rest of the country prior to the founding of the People's Republic.
[2] Dong Jianhong and Chen Tiying wrote that education in Beijing "developed rapidly" after the 1949 founding.
[2] The municipal government established additional higher education facilities, acquired and reorganized schools, established new schools in lower class and working class areas, lowered age limits in the school admission policies, and decreased cutoff scores on achievement tests for working class children during the years 1949 through 1957.
[2] Dong Jianhong and Chen Tiying wrote that in the Great Leap Forward period school activities were not focused on education and instead were "mostly devoted to political movements and productive labor" which produced a low educational quality.
[2] During the period many schools established school-operated factories that their students worked in, and the Beijing educational authorities established part-work part-study experimental schools and work-study programs.
1 city in the world with the largest scientific research output, as tracked by the Nature Index since the list's inception in 2016.
[15][16] It is also home to the two best universities (Tsinghua and Peking) in the whole of the Asia & Oceania region and emerging countries, with their rankings at #12 and #13 places in the world, respectively by the 2025 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
[17][18][19] Both are members of the C9 League, an alliance of elite Chinese universities offering comprehensive and leading education.
Some of the national key universities in Beijing are: Beijing is home to the largest international students population in China and one of the major destinations for foreign students in the Asia-Pacific region.
Many international students from Japan, Korea, North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere come to Beijing to study every year.
As of 2011 10.8% of ethnic minorities in Beijing have obtained university degrees compared to 0.9% nationally.
As of June 2010 the Beijing government allowed 75 local public and private schools to teach foreign students.
[34] Beijing's compulsory education system is among the best in the world: in 2018, 15-year-old students from Beijing (together with Shanghai, Zhejiang and Jiangsu) outperformed all of the other 78 participating countries in all categories (math, reading, and science) in the Program for International Student Assessment, a worldwide study of academic performance conducted by the OECD.
All public schools in Beijing, including those catering to minorities, give instruction in Mandarin Chinese.
[3] In 2009 the educational authorities inserted components about volunteerism in the curricula of Beijing primary and secondary schools.
The enrollment in the nurseries and kindergartens made up 84.5% of urban children above 3 within the designated age group in Beijing.
